get a life, you don''t need a million to retire well 4th (2002)

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Get a Life
You Don’t Need a
Million to Retire Well
4th edition
by Ralph Warner
FOURTH EDITION SEPTEMBER 2002
Editors MARY RANDOLPH
STEPHANIE HAROLDE

TERRI HEARSH
Illustrations MARI STEIN
Cover Design TONI IHARA
Book Design TERRI HEARSH
Index JEAN MANN
Proofreading MU’AFRIDA BELL
Printing BERTELSMANN SERVICES INC.
Warner, Ralph E.
Get a life : you don’t need a million to retire well / by Ralph Warner. 4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-87337-837-7
1. Retirement income United States Planning. 2. Old age pensions United States. 3.
Social security United States 4. Finance, Personal United States. I. Title.
HD7125.W375 2002
332.024’01 dc21
2002071924
Permissions:
Material from The Art of Friendship, by Christine Leefeldt and Ernest Callenbach, which appears
in Chapter 4, is used with the permission of the authors. Material from Simple Living Investments,
by Michael Phillips and Catherine Campbell, which appears in Chapter 4, is used with the
permission of the authors and Clear Glass Publishing of San Francisco, CA.
Copyright © 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002 by Ralph Warner.
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Acknowledgments
Many people have generously helped me deepen my understanding of what it
really means to enjoy a successful retirement and how people in midlife can best
prepare to enjoy life after 65. In both regards, I’m particularly indebted to Ernest
Callenbach, Afton Crooks, Bernie and Bob Giusti, Arthur Levenson, Babette
Marks, Henry and Althea Perry, Hazel Peterson, Yuri Shibata, Cecil Stewart, Carol
Thompson and Peter Wolford, whose fascinating observations appear throughout
this book. I’m sure you’ll agree that this would be a far lesser work without their
wisdom.
I have also received valuable suggestions and guidance from Leslie Armistead
of the Career Action Center, Palo Alto, California; Gail Drulis, Director of the
Albany, California, YMCA; Doris Sloan, a friend from the Board of Directors of the
Save San Francisco Bay Association and Amy Ihara, my inimitable and inspira-
tional mother-in-law.
Thanks, too, to Linda Hanger, Denis Clifford, Naomi Puro, Rod Duncan and
Sarah Stromeyer, all of whom made helpful contributions to my research and fact-
gathering efforts. Beth Lawrence has also been of huge assistance by contributing
Internet savvy to this third edition.
Much inspired research for this book was done by Stanley Jacobsen, a twice-
retired librarian who, at age 70+, cheerfully arrives at work at Nolo every morning
at least an hour early. Stan’s skill at mining online databases for golden nuggets
about retirement and aging has been particularly helpful.
I’m also greatly indebted to Michael Phillips and Catherine Campbell, whose
groundbreaking little book, Simple Living Investments (Clear Glass Publishing, San
Francisco), I first read over 15 years ago. Still in print, this excellent work was one
of the first to emphasize that when it comes to enjoying a successful retirement,
who you are is far more important than how much you earn.
Finally, I owe mega-thanks to my good friends and editors Stephanie Harolde,
Terri Hearsh, Mary Randolph and Susan (Lulu) Cornell. Each of them has cared

about this book almost as much as I have. By dint of numerous suggestions and
lots of hands-on editing, they have coaxed, cajoled and sometimes flat-out
demanded that I work harder to make it better. Every author should have such
wonderful colleagues.
Dedication
For my kids: André, Andromache, Eddie, Joe and Vilaylock.
It would be hard to find a nicer bunch.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1
What Will You Do When You Retire? 7
Plan to Keep Busy 8
The Importance of Thinking Ahead 9
Making an Action Plan 16
Working Part-Time 17
Volunteering for a Good Cause 24
Pursuing Personal Interests 29
Continuing Your Education 31
Can You Buy an Action-Packed Retirement? 37
A Conversation With Ernest Callenbach 41
2
Health and Fitness 49
Some Immediate Ways to Improve Your Health 51
Stop Smoking 52
Clean Up Your Diet 52
Maintain a Healthy Weight 53
Control Your Blood Pressure 55
Control Your Cholesterol 57
Prevent Brittle Bones 60
Manage Stress 60

Get Needed Medical Tests 61
Exercise Often 62
Finding Time to Exercise 65
Make the Commitment 65
Work Less 66
Cut Down Commute Time 69
Squeezing Out a Few Hours to Work Out 69
A Conversation With Arthur Levenson 71
3
Family 77
The Value of Close Family Ties 78
How Healthy Is Your Family? 81
Ways to Improve Family Functioning 83
Spend More Time With Your Children 83
Work for a Family-Friendly Employer 84
Keep Your Family Unit as Extended as Possible 86
Don’t Take Family Leadership for Granted 88
Try to Develop a Sense of Humor About Lifestyle Differences 91
Don’t Give Up on Black Sheep 92
For Couples: Improving Your Relationship 95
Bernie and Bob Giusti 96
Getting Close Again 97
For Men Only: Look Beyond Your Paycheck 102
A Conversation With Henry and Althea Perry 105
4
Friends 113
Make Some Younger Friends 119
Forming New Friendships 121
Couples: Make Sure Your Friends Are Really Yours 124
Why It’s Wise to Join Early 128

A Conversation With Yuri Moriwaki Shibata 131
5
Loving Life 139
Embrace Life, Not Money 140
Retirement Role Models 142
Dare to Be Authentic 146
A Conversation With Hazel Peterson 151
6
Reaching Out for Help to Create Your Successful
Retirement 157
Find Positive Mentors 161
Look Inward 163
Participate in a Group Process 165
Forming a Geezer/Geezelle Group 168
A Conversation With Carol Thompson 175
7
Nursing Homes: How to Avoid Them,
or Pay for Them If You Can’t 181
Staying Out of a Nursing Home 183
Guard Your Health 185
Strengthen Your Family Relationships 185
Support Community Efforts to Provide Senior Services 186
Long-Term Care Insurance 188
The Cost of Long-Term Care and of Long-Term Care Policies 188
Are Long-Term Care Policies Lousy Deals? 189
Who Should Consider Insurance? 189
How to Find a Good Long-Term Care Policy 193
A Conversation With Cecil Stewart 197
8
How Much Money Will You Need

When You Retire? 203
A Closer Look at the Retirement Industry 204
How Much Retirement Savings Is Enough? 208
Estimating Your Retirement Needs 211
A Conversation With Afton Crooks 221
9
Where Will Your Money Come From
After Age 65? 227
Social Security Retirement Benefits 228
How Much Will You Receive? 230
Social Security and Working After Retirement 232
Pensions and Individual Retirement Savings Plans 232
Employer Pension Plans 233
Individual Retirement Savings Plans 236
Continuing to Work 240
Income From Savings and Investments 243
Why Many Scare Stories Are Wrong 243
How Much Extra Do You Really Need to Save? 245
Inheritance 249
Talking to Your Parents 253
How to Think About Inheritance Uncertainties 256
Gifts 258
Early Retirement Incentives and Buy-Outs 260
Withdrawing Equity From Your House 261
Rent Out One or More Rooms 262
Move to a Less Expensive House 262
Sell Your House and Become a Renter 263
Get a Reverse Mortgage 264
A Conversation With Babette Marks 267
10

How to Save Enough—Even If You Think
It’s Impossible 273
Credit Card Interest: How the Poor Pay the Rich 276
Looking at Your Credit Habits 280
Practical Ways to Break the Credit Habit 283
Using a Home Equity Loan or Borrowing From a
401(k) Plan to Pay Off Credit Card Debt 285
Plan to Avoid Car Payments 285
How to Buy a Decent Used Car for Cash 288
Prepay Your Mortgage 291
Comparing Mortgage Prepayments to Other Investments 293
Where Will Money to Prepay Your Mortgage Come From? 294
Adding Up the Savings 297
A Conversation With Peter Wolford 299
11
The Savvy Peasant’s Investment Guide 305
How to Invest Like a Savvy Peasant 306
Basic Investment Principles 312
Bank Savings Accounts 313
Bank Certificates of Deposit 313
Money Market Accounts 314
U.S. Treasury Bills 315
U.S. Government Bonds and Notes 315
Municipal Bonds 317
Corporate Bonds 318
Stock 319
Stock Mutual Funds 321
Mutual Fund Basics 321
Variable Annuities 330
Immediate or Fixed Annuities 331

Real Estate 332
Precious Metals and Exotic Investments 334
Index
Introduction
“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is only by
spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
—Sarah Bernhardt
The premise of this book is simple: Popular advice that says you’ll need to save a
big pile of money to have a successful retirement is hugely exaggerated and sadly
incomplete. Instead, you should focus on the things that will truly make your later
years more enjoyable and fulfilling: your health, spiritual life, relationships with
family and friends and a full plate of interesting things to do. Sure, putting aside an
adequate financial reserve is also important. But over-concentrating on saving big
bucks for retirement and not enough on living well now is a huge mistake.
I decided to write this book after reading hundreds of books and articles about
retirement. Most have titles like “Don’t Die Poor,” “If You Think You’re Saving
Enough, You’re Wrong” or “Baby Boomers in Denial About the Need to Save More.”
And it’s not only the titles that are depressingly similar. The message is also pretty
much the same: To avoid being destitute and dependent later in life, each of us
needs to put aside an impossibly large amount of money during our working
years, money we should have begun saving at least 15 years ago. Many of these
publications implore readers to spend less (often far less) and place the resulting
savings in mutual funds, annuities and other investments—an approach that usually
assumes the reader either has a hefty income or is willing to live almost exclusively
on beans and potatoes.
2 GET A LIFE
But in addition to reviewing retirement literature, I did something that was a lot
more fun. I sought out and talked to lots of people who are enjoying their retirement
years. I wanted to know what set these zestful people apart from the many other
retirees who spend their last years bored, lonely and depressed. Among the

questions I asked were:
•What is your typical day like?
•What things have been truly important to you during your retirement?
• Do you work for pay or do volunteer work?
• How do you explain the fact that some older people enjoy energized and
interesting lives while so many others are depressed, angry and misan-
thropic?
• Do you exercise?
• Do you have many friends? If so, how old are they?
• As you age, do spiritual concerns become more important and if so, how
do you express them?
• How much money do you spend in a year? Is it more or less than you
anticipated when you were younger?
• If you could tell a middle-aged person just one thing about how to prepare
for retirement, what would it be?
What I learned from these discussions, and from my own observations, is that
there is a huge gap between the “save more money” message of the personal
finance press and investment industry and what active, interesting retirees them-
selves say is important. The successful retired people I’ve talked with are, for the
most part, not primarily interested in money—either in spending lots of it, piling
up more or worrying about having enough. In this connection, I am indebted to
the financial columnist Sandra Block for what has become one of my favorite
quotes. It comes from an English gravestone and goes like this.
Here lies a miser who cared for himself,
who cared for nothing but gathering wealth.
Now where he is and how he fares
nobody knows and nobody cares.
True, a few of the retirees I queried had ample savings and no money worries;
their focus on other retirement challenges is hardly a surprise. But many others,
with more typical middle-class incomes, also don’t give money much thought.

INTRODUCTION 3
Some have chosen to live fairly frugal lives; others are so busy thinking and doing
interesting things they simply don’t have the time or desire to focus a large amount
of energy on their finances.
If you doubt this, be sure to read the comments of the energized, life-embracing
seniors whose comments appear in the conversations interspersed between the
chapters of this book. When each was asked, “What is the most important thing a
middle-aged person can do to prepare for retirement?”, all came up with pretty
much the same list:
• “Learn new things”
• “Develop lots of interests”
• “Find useful ways to connect to the world”
• “Cultivate important family relationships and friendships”
• “Take steps to protect your health.”
But what about all those articles and books that claim that, to enjoy a successful
retirement, you must save hundreds of thousands—or even a million—dollars?
Don’t they make a valid point when they argue that it should be a high priority to
put enough money aside to guarantee a fun-filled retirement and pay for all fore-
seeable emergencies that could occur if you lived until extreme old age? Don’t be
so sure. True, the successful retired people I’ve talked to almost uniformly say it
makes sense to accumulate at least a modest retirement savings nest egg, but most
caution that too strong an emphasis on earning and saving during one’s middle
years can actually be counterproductive to enjoying a successful retirement. If you
don’t take pre-retirement steps to help ensure you will enjoy a healthy, active,
friend-filled and interesting retirement, no amount of money will buy those things
later.
I’ll go a step further and argue that there is often a direct connection between a
midlife obsession with work and saving and an unhappy retirement. Imagine an
overweight, poorly conditioned 50-year-old man returning tired and harried from
a ten-hour day at the office. He tells his wife (who has just staggered in from her

own full-time job) and children to please keep the noise down while he has a
drink, eats a bag of chips and watches Washington Week in Review. Assuming this
fellow lives long enough to reach the affluent retirement he is straining so hard to
achieve, chances are he will confront a life of poor health, a family he hardly
knows and, now that he no longer works, few true interests besides reading Forbes
4 GET A LIFE
magazine. Against this unhappy background, the fact he and his wife own a large
portfolio of blue-chip stocks is unlikely to do him much good.
But if accumulating lots of money in midlife does not guarantee successful
retirement, why do so many people think it does? Here are my best answers:
• People saving for retirement have never experienced it, and have only the
haziest idea of what their financial needs are likely to be. They don’t know
that they are likely to spend a great deal less—often about half—of what
they spend now. (Chapter 8 shows you how to estimate how much retirement
income you’ll really need.)
• Because most people tend to socialize with people their own age, they
typically know few retired people outside their own families who can serve
as role models.
• The retirement industry’s siren song—“work long hours and save, save,
save or you’ll end up poor, miserable and a burden to your family”—tends
to fall on receptive ears. After all, most Americans have been brought up to
believe it is wise to sacrifice present gratification for future benefits. (If you
fool around instead of doing your homework, you’ll never get into college
or graduate school, or get a good job or make something of yourself.)
• Much of what people think they know about retirement comes from the
media or retirement planning seminars. Although rarely disclosed, the
“experts” who create these materials are almost always directly or indirectly
paid by the securities or insurance industries. To keep earning cumulative
annual profits in the tens of billions of dollars, these businesses must
convince Americans to save huge sums for retirement.

• Fear sells newspapers. As a result, Americans are bombarded with false
messages, such as:
■
“The Social Security system is sure to be bankrupt in a few years—
anyone who counts on getting a penny from it is nuts.”
■
“The cost of living is going up so fast that whatever you put aside now
will purchase pathetically little when you retire, so you need to save
much more.”
■
“As people live longer, they face a high probability of spending many
years in a nursing home or other institutional care facility. Unless
you have lots of money put aside, you’re likely to end your life in a
snake pit. Good care is so expensive you can never save too much.”
INTRODUCTION 5
The fact that we are so often importuned to save for retirement isn’t all bad. A
little anxiety about the future can be a healthy thing if it motivates us to put aside a
reasonable financial cushion. The real problem occurs when we become so pre-
occupied with saving for retirement that we fail to invest enough time and energy
in areas more likely to help us enjoy a satisfying retirement. ■

Chapter 1
What Will You Do When
You Retire?
Plan to Keep Busy 8
The Importance of Thinking Ahead 9
Making an Action Plan 16
Working Part-Time 17
Volunteering for a Good Cause 24
Pursuing Personal Interests 29

Continuing Your Education 31
Can You Buy an Action-Packed Retirement? 37
8 GET A LIFE
“Old age ain’t for sissies, honey.”
—Bette Davis
Many Americans already in midlife will live from one-quarter to one-third of their
lives after the traditional retirement age of 65. So, even if after you officially retire
you continue to work part-time, travel widely and participate in sports or other
leisure activities, you will have plenty of time to do many other things. After talking
to hundreds of older people, I’m convinced that the degree to which most people’s
retirement years are fulfilling has a great deal to do with how they spend this large
chunk of discretionary time. People who are busily involved in a wide variety of
activities—both mental and physical—are likely to do well. This probably doesn’t
surprise you. But what you may never have considered—and something that could
even make you rethink how you spend time today—is that if you wait until retire-
ment to start looking for interests that will happily occupy you, it may be too late.
Put more bluntly, unless you develop habits of the mind, body and heart in mid-
life that will allow you to lead a healthy, interesting and socially connected retire-
ment, you risk becoming one of those bored and boring old farts you walk around
the block to avoid.
Plan to Keep Busy
Many retirees report experiencing a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, they
have the sense that time is short and their life is running out. On the other, they
don’t have anything interesting to do after lunch. Even the most avid fisherman,
gardener, traveler or dog lover is likely to find plenty of time to both follow this
passion and do many other things—including, if she isn’t careful, becoming bored,
depressed and prematurely dependent on others. As my friend Babette Marks, now
in her 80s, puts it,
The ability to maintain an active involvement in life in a number of different
ways is one key to leading a decent life when you’re older. Face it, what

else have you got? Your health probably isn’t great, half your old friends
are dead and you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror. If you don’t keep
interested and involved with lots of activities and interests, you’ll end up a
depressed old vegetable.
WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU RETIRE? 9
Babette is as right as she is blunt. In my observation, most people—especially
those who have been busy earlier in life—make a successful transition to a reason-
ably fulfilling retirement if, and only if, they stay busy doing things that reinforce
their sense of self-worth. Usually this means being involved with others in activities
they feel are meaningful. I can’t find anyone in their 60s and 70s who tells me it’s
fun to spend most of their time watching TV, sitting on a park bench, sleeping late,
or even reading. And even many people who are more active—jogging, walking,
bike riding or swimming—report that continually doing these things alone can
quickly become joyless. To the contrary, people whose lives revolve almost exclu-
sively around these types of solo activities seem to be sicker and more depressed
and tend to die sooner than those who are more actively involved with life.
One example of how staying connected to a busy and interesting world seems
to correlate with long life and intellectual vigor can be seen in the careers of the
justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the few jobs in America where people
have never been required, or even officially encouraged, to retire until they are
obviously no longer able to do the work. Out of the more than 100 justices who
have served on the Court since it began to function in 1789, over 50% have
served into at least their middle 70s, an astonishing age when you remember that
over half of the justices died before the year 1900, when the average U.S. life
expectancy was less than 50.
You may think I’m belaboring a fairly obvious point. Chances are you don’t
want to be an old couch potato anyway, and accept that staying involved in life’s
daily affairs probably does increase the odds of enjoying a fulfilling retirement.
Great, but can you back up your conviction by answering this simple question:
“How are you preparing now to be able to lead an interesting life and hopefully

even a passion-filled life after you retire?”
The Importance of Thinking Ahead
Some of us look forward to retirement with an almost childlike sense of anticipation:
“This is what I’ve waited for all my life—a really long summer vacation!” Depend-
ing on our particular retirement fantasy—gardening, travel, woodworking, painting,
golfing, spending time with grandchildren or simply having the freedom to take a
daily nap—leisure-time activities are likely to figure large. Finally we will be free
to enjoy every bit of personal gratification we have postponed since the day our
10 GET A LIFE
parents first said, “If you don’t stop playing and do your homework, you’ll never
amount to anything.”
Lots of other people in midlife, however, simply refuse to think about retirement.
The idea creates a strong sense of unease because they can’t conjure up any clear
vision of what their lives will be like as they age. This inability to confront the
inevitability that work, family and even recreational patterns will change later in
life is especially common among people whose lives center around their jobs. As
one midlevel manager I talked to remarked, “Once they take away my employee
ID number, I’m not sure what I’ll do or how I’ll define myself.”
At 65, Lots of People Are Just Getting Started
The notion that older folks are supposed to sit on a park bench and feed
pigeons while they wait for the pearly gates to open is increasingly seen as
baloney by people of all ages. Many people do their best and most creative
work after normal retirement age, a fact that is finally gaining wide recognition.
Ronald Reagan served two terms in the White House after age 65, and
the senior George Bush served most of one. Nelson Mandela didn’t become
President of South Africa until he was 76. Michelangelo designed St. Peter’s
cupola at 83. Ben Franklin helped draft the U.S. Constitution when he was
over 80, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. served on the Supreme Court into
his 90s. Many painters and musicians, including Picasso, Matisse and Casals,
continued to create inspirational work well into old age. Verdi’s opera

Falstaff had its debut on his 80th birthday. When, at 93, Georgia O’Keeffe
could no longer see well enough to paint, she took up sculpture. May
Sarton finished her last book, At Eighty-Two: A Journal, just before she died
at age 83. And as we all know, septuagenarian John Glenn retired from the
U.S. Senate in order to have enough time to rejoin the space program.
Missing, of course, from both the rosy and the dismal views of what retirement
is much of a sense of reality. If you’re one of those anticipating an endless summer
vacation, it’s fair to ask whether you really will be able to fill every minute with
favorite leisure activities. Even if you live in a climate warm enough to smack golf
WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN YOU RETIRE? 11
balls every day, and never suffer from mah-jongg wrist, will a heavy diet of sports
and games prove fulfilling? One friend I talked to recently found that it did not.
“After I played golf four days a week for a month, I woke up one day and said to
myself ‘this is just plain silly.’ So I called my former partners and proposed coming
back to work three days a week. When they enthusiastically agreed, I felt as good
as I did the day I got my first job.” What about hanging out with your grandchildren?
Assuming they aren’t too busy with school, gymnastics, soccer and music camp to
make time for you, how many hours a day do you really want to spend with them?
But what if, like a lot of people, you have trouble even picturing your retirement.
Does this mean you are doomed to sit down in a recliner, pull out your new gold-
plated watch and count off the hours until you die? Or will your very fear of all
those empty days goad you into figuring out something interesting to do with the
rest of your life?
The truth is that unless you are one of the few adults who has taken an extended
sabbatical from work and child-rearing during the middle portion of your life, you
have no idea whether or not you’ll be able to easily fill your retirement days with
interesting activities. All of your hopes, fears, plans and expectations are fantasies,
plain and simple. The only way you or I can learn in advance of our own retirement
about what works and what doesn’t is to draw on the experience of people who
have already retired. That’s why, in putting together this book, I’ve included

conversations with numerous spirited older people about how they really fill their
days and whether, in retrospect, there were things they could have done in midlife
to better prepare themselves for a fulfilling retirement. If you don’t read another
word, I urge you to carefully look at what they have to say.
Why should you worry about planning your post-retirement activities long
before you retire? After all, depending on how old you are, your retirement may
be years, or even decades, from now. Unfortunately, however, waiting until after
retirement to figure out what you will do seldom works well. People who count on
developing new interests, activities and involvement after 65 often don’t. Ruth
Cohen, a Beaverton, Oregon, geriatric specialist, puts it like this: “For the first time
in history, older people have a plethora of choices. But unless you have a plan,
you’re not likely to get what you want.” (Business Week, July 21, 1997.) Or as
Fred Astaire remarked, “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it,
you’ve got to start young.”